Starting a New Sorority at IU.

[exlurker]

Originally Posted by breathesgelatin

LOL.

Random question: Let's say an extremely rich alum wanted to do just this. Build a house for their sorority at an ultra-competitive or huge state campus, and then turn it over to the local house corporation. Has anyone ever heard of this occurring before, or of a sorority accepting such an offer?

I'm sure it's happened before with groups of alums sponsoring a house, I'm just wondering about a single-donor situation.

Didn't an alum give $3.5 million or so for a total revamp of the Beta Theta Pi house at Penn State?

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ad.php?t=80448

I haven't seen or heard anything about a single-donor sorority situation done in order to bring a new chapter on campus, though. Certainly seems like something that could happen IF the sorority got invited to colonize AND IF an interested donor was known.

[magichat]

Dick Clark donated the house (castle) to DKE at Syracuse, or so I am told.

[Sister Havana]

Originally Posted by 33girl

The reason the NPC groups who aren't at IU aren't there is because they don't have the mucho deneiro it takes to come onto campus and build a house comparable to the other ones. So OP, if you have that mucho deneiro and want to call the NPC groups that aren't there up and tell them you're going to build them a house, go for it.

It's not so much that as it is the lack of land on which to build a house. IIRC, one of the sororities that was housed in a dorm when I was there years ago wanted to build a house, but they could not get land to build it on. And it really is all about the house - of the 3 sororities that closed when I was there, 2 of them were housed in dorms. When almost every other sorority is in a gorgeous mansion, being housed in a dorm is a HUGE disadvantage.

Interestingly enough, this doesn't seem to be the rule for fraternities. Quite a few fraternity chapters have chartered/recolonized since I was there. (In that time there has been exactly one sorority chapter opened - AOPi recolonized.) There are several unhoused chapters at IU.

[kreich]

Originally Posted by Sister Havana

It's not so much that as it is the lack of land on which to build a house. IIRC, one of the sororities that was housed in a dorm when I was there years ago wanted to build a house, but they could not get land to build it on. And it really is all about the house - of the 3 sororities that closed when I was there, 2 of them were housed in dorms. When almost every other sorority is in a gorgeous mansion, being housed in a dorm is a HUGE disadvantage.

From the info in your post, I think that I was at IU just a few years before you. When I was a junior or senior, TriSigma colonized on campus (living in Ashton) and ADPi was also over in Ashton, too. I agree that the location put them at a disadvantage. When I was going through rush, I didn't consider ADPi because I wanted to get out of the dorms, not commit to a few more years in then. I "regretted" them right after 19-party for this reason.

When I was there, the North Jordon Extension was "extended", so to speak, and there was a whole street just waiting for new houses. My understanding is that houses quickly went up out there. I didn't realize that land was an issue.

[IndyJill]

One of my rare delurks, just to throw in this about the housing situation at IU. Being unhoused isn't just a disadvantage by comparison to chapters with beautiful mansions and non-dorm-food kitchens. Because pledge classes are sized with live-in spaces in mind, the "Campus Culture" of sorority life at IU seems to be more focused on living together in the house, and the anticipation that when you join, you expect to live-in most if not all of your time at IU.

Not to say that nobody ever lives out, because of course some do. But Greek Life, at least for the NPC women, seems to revolve around what goes on inside the chapter houses more than you might expect at schools where quota is based on number of PNMs at pref, rather than house beds.

This makes the hurdles for an unhoused colony even higher first glance.

[SycamorePike]

Not to get off topic, but does anyone know who will be taking over the AEPi house next year? I saw that they were removed from campus and suddenly all of their letters around their house were gone, kinda like SAE a little while back and whoever lived in the house across from Gamma Phi Beta next to St. Paul's Catholic Church. It's now a police training facility. Someone said that was TKE, wasn't sure.

One of my friends was in an NPC at IU and they said that their rush "ceiling" was based on empty beds. It wasn't 100% on that, but it was in the general number that they based on for every recruitment period.